The Doppelgänger
by pillowdrabbler
Summary: Set after Career of Evil. Robin has come back to work for Strike and is faced with a decision. Strike receives a curious delivery through the letterbox… (Spoilers aplenty. I advise against reading this fic if you haven't read the books yet.)
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Using Rowling's initially befuddling style involving switching points of view without warning. Not a one-shot, as the ending suggests, but I'm not sure how long I wish to make it. This is a "kneejerk fic," I suppose, an uncontainable response to the inevitable twist in the gut Career of Evil leaves you with.**

 **Not a native speaker, but I've been using English all my life in the way I've been taught and gotten used to. Please leave a comment or send me a message if you find anything off-putting. Don't hesitate to send me something as well if you have ideas that could help me write this fic.**

 **I don't own Cormoran Strike or Robin Ellacott (yes, Ellacott) or anything related to them.**

* * *

"Alright, out with it."

Robin had been silent if not monosyllabic for two days. She had done her job as well as she had been expected to, but there had been no questions about Strike's day, no offers of tea and sandwiches, and this morning, no offers of sympathy besides a half-hearted grunt when he had told her about how his right knee had been giving him hell since yesterday's four-hour surveillance of yet another soon-to-be divorcee.

She shut her monitor off, swung in her chair, and looked squarely at Strike, wrestling with herself. A few moments more and honesty—always her bloody honesty—won out. "Matt's been promoted."

Strike dropped onto the blue chenille sofa, a conciliatory gift from Robin's mother Linda after she had caused a bit of a scene when she had caught sight of him at Matthew and Robin's wedding. Linda was nothing short of belligerent, and Strike thought her anger justified until she flung accusations of manipulation and crassness in front of the other guests. He told her angrily that Robin had decided to return to her job, which earned him an almost impossibly shrill _What?_ and forced Robin to intervene and lead them out of the modest hall rented for that evening's celebration.

"The case was extremely personal for Cormoran, Mum. He exposed a psychopath for what he was, a psychopath who shouldn't have got off clean but did, who might have eventually murdered his daughter in an elaborate, twisted scheme for revenge. Can you imagine the guilt he felt? And that's just speaking of one of the people he suspected of sending us that leg," Robin said. Strike felt a surge of warmth when she used _us_ and not _me_. She had already told him she would be back at the office after the honeymoon, but it was the plural pronoun that told him that the deal was well and truly sealed.

After Cormoran and Linda exchanged apologies, Linda went back inside the hall under orders from Robin to apologize as well to the bewildered guests. When Robin's mother was safely out of earshot, the detective told Robin that he ought to go and not cause any further awkwardness. She was reluctant to let him off but eventually saw the sense in it and nodded her assent. As he turned to leave, Robin gave in to an impulse and put her arms around him. It took him a few moments to swallow his surprise and hug her back.

"Thank you—"

"I'm sorry, Rob—"

Their simultaneous speech gave way to laughter, and with a wave and a grudging _Congratulations_ , Strike made for town in search of Shanker and the car.

Strike had thanked Linda enthusiastically over the phone when the gift was sent, and when she asked Robin why the piece of furniture had given him so much pleasure, Robin said, "The old one farted," and Robin and Strike laughed raucously, puzzling Linda even more.

Strike said nothing in reply to Robin's announcement. He was sure there was more to it but knew that it would come out without his prompting. After a minute's pregnant silence, Robin said, "He's being transferred. To New York."

It had been a little over six months since he had sent Robin away, five-and-a-half since she had gone back. The cases that had lined up since the business with Whittaker, Laing, and Brockbank were dully yet conveniently rife with middle- and upper-class paranoia and left them in little to no risk of any sort of harm. She ought to go before things got worse as they were bound to.

"When do you leave?" Strike asked. His eyes landed on the door to the inner office and stayed there.

"I don't…" Her eyebrows knitted themselves together, as though she was mustering resolve by physical effort. She waited for Strike to meet her eyes and said, "I'm not leaving."

"What?"

"I'm not leaving. I'm stay—"

"Yes, I got that. Does Matthew know?"

"You're the first I've told it to."

"And you decided on this… when? As you turned in your chair and finally let go of your sulk?"

Each time Robin meditated on her choices, she reached a dead end. London colluded with her career in detection in an attempt to pull her to what she thought was her natural inclination. The glint in Matthew's eye when he had told her the news and the barely hidden relief in her mother's voice when she had passed it on had added fuel to the fire of her rebellion, of her insistence to stay on the path she had almost been forced to turn back on when Strike had sacked her. Almost as soon as her thoughts took this tack, however, the silver wedding band and its engraved diamonds came unbeckoned to her view and doused the flames. She had made a promise in that church, a promise her and Strike's clients were predisposed to sully with distrust and infidelity, a promise she had told herself she would treat with the reverence so seldom accorded to it.

She had admitted to herself in a moment of brutal honesty that to stay in London was to turn away from Matthew, a possibility which promised relief and pain in equal measure. Their marriage had not been unpleasant, but she couldn't bring herself to relive the elation she had been treated to when the engagement had begun and the ring with sapphires had fit her finger perfectly. Matthew had avoided any conversation about Strike, for which Robin was grateful. But since the honeymoon, she and Matthew had hardly spent enough time together to speak much. They both worked round the clock, even during weekends—Robin, because it was simply the nature of her job, and Matthew, because he had had to put everything into the promotion he had aimed for and got. As things stood, Robin and Matthew's marriage felt like a stalemate.

Had the decision come to her on the spur of the moment? Or were her meditation and sulking, as Strike had put it, ways of putting off her arrival at the only real conclusion she saw available?

She thought Strike would be glad if she stayed, but his questions just now concealed a vexing accusation she couldn't quite put her finger on. "I've thought of nothing else since last week! I don't know if I ever really considered the alternative," she told Strike.

"Will he be stationed there temporarily?" Strike asked softly, surprising Robin, who expected a further rising of tension.

"I don't know." Robin closed her eyes. "I don't think I care. I don't care enough, at any rate."

A hand rested on Robin's shoulder, jolting her. "You need to rest. Get on home, talk to him, think on it some more. You don't want to put your foot in something you will want to get it out of and find out soon enough you can't." There was no doubt in Strike's mind that Matthew was a twat. He was Robin's biggest mistake, but it wasn't his job to convince her of that.

Strike helped Robin into her coat and saw her out of the glass door. With a final wave, he turned around and limped back into the inner office, intent on reading Robin's notes on Beer Belly, a paunchy adulterer who always brought a six pack to his lover's home. (They had given Beer Belly's wife photos of her husband in action, but she had continued to avail herself of their services because she wanted proof that there was a _second_ lover.) As he sat in his desk chair, the door to the inner office reopened, revealing a panting Robin.

"What happened?" Strike said, poised to stand and, despite his burning knee, give chase.

"Nothing like that," replied Robin, motioning for Strike to sit back down. She composed herself, looked Strike in the eye, and asked, "Would you like me to stay?"

The question winded him. He had been looking forward to capping the day off with investigation notes, some homemade curry, and a quarter of a pack or so of Benson & Hedges. "You already know the answer to that," he managed.

"Actually, no. I don't." Why would Robin think he wanted her to leave? After risking all humiliation and asking her to come back at her wedding, of all times?

"Of course I would." His voice had become little more than a whisper. Then, as if catching himself, he added brusquely, "Don't be silly."

Robin beamed, and Strike felt warmer than he had since her sulking had begun. "Thank you. I just had to know for sure. Because… You know, _gross misconduct_."

"You're not going to let that go, are you?" He took comfort in the way they could now joke about how he had foolishly fired her.

"Not a chance. I'll be off." She faced him again as soon as she turned away. "Oh! Almost forgot! A sealed manila envelope arrived this morning, addressed to you. It's in my right drawer."

"Stick a paper knife in it, did you?" he asked with a smirk. His recent admission made him feel a tad giddy.

"Don't even start, _Cormoran_." She did this sometimes, said his name as though he was being told off by his mother. It had never failed to amuse both of them, and it didn't fail today.

Strike followed Robin to the outer office. With one last smile for her and the soft thud of the glass door closing, he took the envelope from the drawer and ripped the flap off.

He had hardly pulled out the contents when he dropped them, scalded. There were three photos containing three different corpses of women, but each face was an exact copy of Robin's.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Decided to change the timeline (I edited the first chapter). This is now set roughly six months after Robin and Matthew's wedding.**

 **Edited this chapter as well. Had a bit of a realization and decided to incorporate it here. If you've already read this chap, please read it again.**

 **I've noticed a few members of the online community placing a lot of significance on that infamous voicemail. I'm of the opinion that it contained little more than what was revealed in _Career of Evil_. Feel free to tell me if you have an opposing theory.**

 **I've fictionalized 3-D printing technology (think Ethan Hunt in "Rogue Nation"). I don't think you can remotely produce accurate 3-D prints of faces. Hope this liberty doesn't bother you too much.**

* * *

As the train sped on from Tottenham Court Road, Robin's thoughts rested on her reconciliation with Strike. It had hit her during the short walk that had taken her from Denmark Street to the station that Strike had not previously figured heavily in her contemplation. The pull to stay in London had always come from her refusal to permanently lose her job. She did not have any fantasies of flying thousands of miles away then coming back and picking things back up at the office, Strike leaving the position of his partner vacant until her return. She didn't know if private detection flourished in America, but she was certain that she couldn't rely on a temp agency making another mistake and placing her under the wing of an investigator she could build considerable rapport with. It became apparent, now more than ever, that leaving London meant severing the tie—made sturdy by constant fraying and knotting again—she had made with her boss.

Her _partner_ , Robin corrected herself, remembering the conversation that had thrown her back to the office. It had been outside the hall, at nearly the same spot where she had told her mother the vaguest details about Brockbank in front of Strike.

* * *

The deluge of speeches came and went; the cake was cut; knives clinked wineglasses and silenced themselves only after Matthew and Robin kissed. The faint buzz of controlled talk and the obligatory congregation of dinner were over, replaced by the thumping bass of electronic music and the scattering of the crowd. Robin excused herself from everyone and, with a grave nod from Matthew, went to Strike and led him outside.

"The Met got Laing. He's the Shacklewell Ripper," Strike said without preamble. "They got Brockbank as well," he added after a pause, knowing the news would bring Robin peace.

"You owe your new ear and nose to Laing, then," Robin said flatly. Concern gripped her the moment she took note of Strike's state, but the rising anger she thought had plateaued reasserted itself with ease.

With Strike's vow that he would leave Masham at the first request came the vow that he would prostrate himself and implore her to go back at the first opportunity. If that meant making uncomfortable admissions and making a fool of himself in the process, then so be it.

"I was an imbecile," Strike said. Robin said nothing, unnerving him, expected though it was. Strike took a steadying breath. "I connected the dots the night of your assault. I knew it wasn't Brockbank when I charged headlong into your—."

"You what?" Robin's simmering anger threatened to explode into outrage. "You accused me of… You told me that night about a church connection the police had made between Brockbank and Kelsey! You knew they were following a false lead and you lay that burden on me because I actually managed to _save_ two children?"

"The business was in shambles, Robin! Carver made it clear he'd drive it to the ground if we so much as lay a finger on any of the suspects."

"And yet you went to Laing."

"I realize—"

"What do you realize, Cormoran? That you shut me out of the investigation on Brockbank—an investigation that had progressed thanks in large part to _my_ effort—to… to what? To keep me safe, when all I needed was to continue to be involved? That you're a bloody hypocrite for doing what you did to Laing after blasting me for what I did to Brockbank? That it was as though the months I had worked for you, worked _with_ you, even when the business was going to shit, amounted to nothing when you sacked me?"

Strike could not come up with a response to the tirade, so Robin said, "Or did you come here to tell me that you could forgive my mistake and chalk it up to my inexperience and unwarranted insubordination?"

Strike's own anger bubbled to the surface, a visceral response to being challenged in the way only Robin seemed to manage. He tamped it down, remembering what he had vowed to do. "I felt I had to protect you." He held up a hand when Robin's mouth opened again. "Hear me out.

"If anything had happened to you, if Laing had raped you or knifed you to a permanent stupor… if he had killed you, I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself. It would've blown me to bits. You matter to me, Robin. More than I let on, more than I was prepared to admit even to myself. It left me vulnerable. And you know what a poor sod I am when it comes to vulnerability. I wanted it gone, so I sent you to what I thought were dead ends while I tried to wrap up the investigation on my own.

"I'm sorry, Robin. I have nothing to make you go back except promises to endeavor to treat you as an equal, to keep you informed and involved, but I'm going to ask you to anyway." His heart thumped so wildly in his chest it seemed to have left its perch and was rebounding on every surface of his ribcage. "Will you?"

Robin's expression had visibly softened in the middle of Strike's speech. Strike had just opened up in a manner she had thought him incapable of. This was a man who burned bridges—as his refusal to contact his ex-fiancee would attest to—and didn't give so much as a glance backward. That he was here, telling her all of this, spoke volumes in itself. She had entertained the idea of him begging her to go back, and she had resolved to give him a rough time of it, but now that it was happening she couldn't find it in herself to. "Was going to Alyssa's a mistake?" Robin asked.

Strike found that an odd question to ask. He somehow knew, however, that his response to it would determine Robin's own. He went for honesty. "Yes. You shouldn't have gone off to her." As Robin's face crumpled, he continued, "Not without my help. I would've been more than glad to assist you if Laing had been behind bars before then."

Robin accepted his answer with a nod. "This past week's been hell. Do you understand how much the job means to me?" Robin paused and waited for Strike to look at her directly. "It makes me feel like I have control over my own life, that I can make my own decisions, that I'm not just holding everyone else's hands and allowing them to yank me to where they think I should be. That night when you…" She fought her tears; the last thing she needed was the uncomprehending sympathy of the wedding's attendees. "It all came crashing down. It was like the rape all over again. There I was, assaulted, reduced to a mere victim. Set aside and ineffectual. I had to do _something_ , do you understand?" A tear escaped, and she swiped it clean as though she were swatting a fly. "You could have told me about Laing."

She hit the nail on the head. Much of the guilt that had chipped away at Strike's anger against Robin had come from the fact that he had not bothered to tell her immediately about his epiphany. It would have given her something else to focus on, and she may not have made that premature visit to Brockbank. "Yes, I could have. Been beating myself up over it, believe me. I had no proof then, but I had begun cooking up a plan to get it. You deserved to be a part of that."

In the ensuing pause, Strike almost heard the wheels turn in Robin's head, his ribcage about to burst. Robin looked back into the hall, considering what the guests were thinking about her prolonged absence, and decided that they didn't have a lot of time. She had to give an answer now. It was only a matter of saying it—try as she might to deny it, she had known from the outset what her answer would be if Strike came to her and asked her back. "Alright, then," she said.

"Alright, what?"

"I'll go back."

He heaved a sigh and beamed, fighting the urge to wrap Robin in a tight hug. Robin's faint smile told him that the road ahead wouldn't be easy, but he was lucky that there was still a road to traverse in the first place.

"Why didn't you ring me?" Strike asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

"What?"

"I tried to contact you a few days ago. Left a message on voicemail."

"I didn't… Are you sure?"

Strike's quick mind told him that Matthew may have got to it first. _Fucking twat_. He knew that Robin would easily reach the same conclusion if he told her the truth. However much he disliked Matthew, he didn't want to sully Robin's wedding night by catalyzing an ill-timed row. There was nothing in that voicemail that he hadn't already said to her. "Now that I think about it, no. Maybe I just imagined dialing your number and hearing the beep. Drove me to fucking distraction, it did," Strike said with a smirk, then thought that he may have pushed his luck too far and endangered their tenuous reconciliation. It relieved him when Robin gave a light chuckle, made him promise he'd tell her what happened with Laing, and ushered him back into the hall.

* * *

Robin had struggled with her resentment for a few weeks when she had gone back. She had caught herself being short with Strike without reason multiple times. It was a credit to him that he had refused to respond in kind and taken it all in stride, that he had acknowledged Robin's need for distance when she had needed him to.

Their partnership now neared complete mending, and Robin didn't fancy losing grip of it. It struck her that Strike had become a constant in her life, that she had accepted him as such without reservation. To move to New York would be to lose _him_ , and Robin surprised herself with the vehemence with which she reacted to the possibility.

At Holland Park, Robin recognized Beer Belly amongst the crowd that just alighted. She had become accustomed to seeing him only when she was on his tail. The unexpected sighting reminded her of her inadvertent contact with Laing the day she had slipped on roadside curry at Wollaston Close. Strike had yet to establish then that he was the Shacklewell Ripper, and she shivered anew at Laing's unwelcome invitation for her to clean up at his flat.

Her vibrating mobile shook thoughts of Laing away. It was Strike.

 _Text when home._

Something was up, Robin knew, but the three words told her not to ring Strike and wait until tomorrow for the news.

* * *

 _Home._

The text settled Strike as he lay in bed and sleep eluded him. He had perused the photos after Robin had left, attempting to make out any similarities between the bodies and gathering clues as to their location. He had tried to phone Wardle thrice, but the line had been busy each time.

All the bodies were divested of clothing, revealing stark differences in complexion: black as charcoal, the light tan of leather, and white as milk. Robin's face adorned them up to the base of the neck, the masks betraying themselves by the same unnatural outline above the collarbone. All three lay supine on uneven ground smattered with gravel, their hands at their sides, their heads tilted to show identical bullet holes emphasized by thin red circles of crusted blood, the masks probably hiding messy splatters underneath.

These bodies showed no sign of struggle. Each woman had been rendered powerless before the fatal shot. It was little consolation that death had probably come to them in an instant—that they had not writhed in pain while their lives had bled out—but it was consolation all the same.

When Strike accepted that he wouldn't be able to gather anything more from the photographs, his mobile rang. Wardle.

"Couldn't reach you the past few hours," Strike said as a hello.

"You were calling me? What for?"

"Letterbox. Another delivery."

"Another fucking body part?"

"No. Photos. Not sure which is worse, though." Strike would have found another leg sent through the mail both harrowing and vaguely amusing. His gut told him Wardle's news and the envelope's contents were related, so he refrained from describing the dead women. "What have you got?"

"You won't like it."

"Nobody likes a call from the Met. Tell—"

"Just priming you, pal," Wardle said, a touch irritably. "We got another shit storm. Six bodies in three days, all on the outskirts of London. All of them wore masks and bloody accurate ones at that. Hair, skin, eyes—everything. Looks like the real thing. A bit unnatural up close, but stand far enough away and you'll have the sharpest bloke fooled. They could only have been made using a 3-D printer."

"Jesus. Six bodies, all given new identities?"

"Yes, and here's the bad—"

"Three of them have Robin's face on."

"How in hell did you… shit. You ought to change that letterbox, Strike. It keeps attracting wackos."

Strike wasn't in the mood for humor. "Why did you call me, then? Why tell me about the others?" Strike had trumped the Met thrice. Perhaps they now thought it advantageous to use him as an ally and not treat him as some sort of competition to upstage.

"Can't talk about it here." Strike could make out soft chatter and the steady drone of air conditioning through the line. Wardle was still at work. "Listen, can I drop by on the 11th? At, say, half two?"

Strike computed in his head and determined that the 11th was a Wednesday, the day he was set to tail Office Hours, a marketer for an insurance firm whose boss suspected him of creating bogus client calls after too many trips out of office without landing a contract. If the boss was right, then the marketer was, in all likelihood, a repeat offender. He would have to be caught squandering company resources on a different day. "Sure," he said.

Exhaustion overtook Strike when he hung up. A mere six months had passed and another killer cast their shadow over Robin. She would be the first to contradict him, but he felt responsible for it. He wouldn't commit the mistake of keeping any of it from her, however. He was painfully aware that his protectiveness for her had up to this point only served to invite greater danger.

He resigned himself to the conversation he would have with Robin and pictured the ensuing near-obsession both of them would nurse until the killer was caught, hopefully before more wrong-faced corpses turned up. In his mind, Strike forcibly expunged Robin's face from the three photographs and beckoned sleep, grudgingly acknowledging—to Robin's disapproval if she had known—that the move to New York may be in her best interests.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Very sorry for the long delay. It's been said a lot, I know, but that doesn't make it any less true: real life has been craaazy. Hope you enjoy this chap. I'll try to post the next one soon.**

 **New discovery: Google Street View is your bestest best friend. ;)**

* * *

Strike saw through the way Robin's face only slightly paled. She had a habit of feigning immense strength when she had very little, and Strike resented any possibility that she might still have been trying to prove herself to him. Certain that Robin's ostensible calmness had come from his forewarning her that the contents of the envelope were "grisly and personal," Strike found himself glaring at her in an effort to bring out her shock.

"Don't look at me like that," she said.

"I'm not going to sack you for an outburst, Robin. You're free to shriek if you wish to, however unspontaneous it may be at this point."

She bit her quivering bottom lip and heaved a breath. "I had a similar dream some months back," she squeezed out in a whisper.

"What?" Since Robin came back, their conversations had housed the occasional non sequitur. Sharp minds had a tendency to flit, and Strike prided himself on his ability to find connections when none were apparent, but at present he was completely baffled.

"I was at a funeral. I can still see the faces hunched over the coffin. They were familiar to me during the dream, but now I don't recognize any of them. I walked closer to the mourners, but they didn't look up—they just kept crying. And when I got close enough to see who lay beneath the half-opened lid, I saw… I saw my own face." She laughed lightly, humorlessly, still caught in the daze she had put herself into as she had recalled the nightmare.

Robin shook herself out of it and defiantly looked at the photos once more. "I can't help but think of this as a continuation, you know? It feels like a portent coming true."

Strike's glare had turned into a frown during Robin's narrative. Now his face slackened, his eyes drooping in a show of empathy. Robin's current disturbance was a quiet one, and while he wasn't one for protracted navel-gazing, he knew firsthand that such a disturbance often proved more powerful than one outwardly and frantically shown.

"I'm sorry, Robin." He gave her a faint smile when she looked up and felt grateful for her successful attempt to return it. "Six months. Six months and another fucker has got their hands on you." He ran his hand over his hair, his curls' refusal to budge only adding to his frustration. "I checked the envelope for an odd mark or a scribbled word. Went so far as to hope I'd see a return address. Seems clean, fiddled with by gloved hands." Robin nodded, her suspicions confirmed. The intriguing anonymity of it suggested a professional's work. "Wardle's phoned to tell me there were six bodies found in the space of three days. We know of the three," Strike said, pointing at the three photos glaring at them from Robin's desk. "He's coming over next Wednesday to discuss the rest with us."

Robin's continued absent nodding communicated distress more than agreement. Her eyes widened when she grasped what Strike had just said. "The Met are sending him to _us_?"

"I highly doubt it was an institutional decision. He may be going rogue."

"What for?"

"He probably suspects an insider."

"Somebody with the police? Oh God."

"Or used to be with them. Someone who has access to and knows how to work with 3-D printers."

"Doesn't explain why he'd suspect—"

"It's a hunch, Robin. A hunch only Wardle can confirm or disprove."

Robin snatched the photos on her desk in a single sweep and shoved them into the manila envelope, which she stowed again in her right drawer. She only realized how brisk and careless her movements had been when the echoes from the drawer's collision with the desk had died out. "Sorry," she said to Strike, though he shook his head and didn't look like he was about to reproach her.

"We'd just have to chuck all surveillance jobs on Wednesday to the bin."

"I'm still tailing people, then?" Robin looked hopefully at Strike, and he chastised himself for thinking that the murders ought to send her on the next flight to New York. He knew Robin would see the move to America—in light of the information she had recently gleaned—as a coward's way out. He didn't agree with that assessment, but he couldn't help admiring her for it.

"Yes, but I'll take all the night jobs." Robin nodded again, this time fully aware of what she was doing, both relieved for and irked at Strike's apparent concern.

When Strike moved around the desk to prepare tea, she said, "I'm still not moving to New York. I should stay here, see this through. A killer's expressed interest in me, and that isn't new—not anymore. It will make me an asset to this investigation."

"Are you convincing me or yourself?" Strike asked with a light chuckle, expressing his agreement that another investigation involving him and Robin was bound to commence.

Robin found herself smiling despite everything. "Both of us, I suppose."

He dropped the kettle and laid a hand on her shoulder. "I'm convinced," he said. This was the second time Strike touched Robin in two days. Strike had never been particularly tactile in Robin's experience, but she found that she didn't mind the physical comfort. She all but started, in fact, when a wave of disappointment hit her when his hand left its perch. "I'll take care of Beer Belly." She opened her mouth to protest, but Strike beat her to it. "You're distraught, Robin. You're bound to be distracted." She looked down and sighed heavily, moving Strike to add, "And you have all the license to be. Find out more about our clients and who they've asked us to shadow. Sort through the new nutter letters—I think we got a new one asking me to be his pet."

"His first and only pet bear. Maybe he'll take you to the river, watch you fish with your hands." She laughed, and Strike, standing with his mouth agape for a few moments, joined soon after.

He shook his head when he recovered, resuming the task of making tea. "You should have told me you had joined their ranks."

Her smile died down shortly after. A killer was on the loose, and the image of Strike as someone's personal bear could only give them the briefest reprieve.

* * *

Beer Belly, Strike had gathered, was a man who had a knack for attracting women decades younger than himself. He had not, in the course of Strike and Robin's surveillance, gone to the home of more than one woman, but he had continually managed to catch what looked to be willing skimpy-dressed flirts at bars. In defense of his own ego, Strike had to note that Beer Belly's quarries weren't particularly attractive, and he had to add that it was probably due to the adulterer's being wise to the limits of his own attractiveness.

That they had yet to find evidence of another lover left Strike torn between gratitude and resentment. With the job's continuation came a steady stream of paychecks, but the initial excitement Strike had felt for tailing Beer Belly had long since waned.

Sunday afternoon saw Strike sitting in his room with a pack of smokes and a television blaring commentary on an Arsenal-Newcastle match that Strike knew would end nil-nil. He could make better use of his time—anybody always could—but lazy Sundays came infrequently to him, and he relished not just the circumstance, but also his willingness to lie back and do nothing in particular.

He was in the middle of uselessly protesting an offside call when his peripheral vision alerted him to a man of a familiar build ambling on the pavement below. He stood up to get a better view and had to squint and blink a few times before convincing himself that the man could be Beer Belly. The fantasy of a lazy Sunday chucked easily away, he shut the television off, put on his prosthetic and yesterday's discarded clothes, and scampered down the stairs and out onto Denmark Street.

Strike breathed a sigh of relief when he caught sight of the man some yards off, still walking toward Charing Cross Road and precariously holding what looked to be a bottle of wine by its neck with one hand. He followed as the man took a left at the TK Maxx and crossed the street to enter the Soho that ushered passersby and vehicles into Manette Street.

The man's glances to his left and right before entering the bookshop had confirmed his identity. Perseverance and close observation were both key to successful surveillance, but it also invariably required a touch of luck. Robin's tale a few days prior about her train ride with Beer Belly took on an extra layer of amusement—he seemed to be falling straight into their hands, and this made Strike anxious to finally close the case.

Strike contemplated following Beer Belly in, but a confined space could ruin his chances of securing any evidence they would need to show the suspicious wife. He instead positioned himself by the entrance to the TK Maxx and brought out his phone, loading up its camera and pretending to text.

A few minutes passed before Beer Belly came out with a middle-aged man in corduroys and a faded trench coat. The bottle of wine had been passed to the companion, probably a close mate, who was presently holding it up and looking closely at the label.

"Oh, fuck it," Strike muttered under his breath as he resolved to swallow his disappointment. He was about to put his phone away when the other man laughed heartily and planted a kiss on Beer Belly's lips. Astonishment was plain on the latter's face for a second, but he recovered quickly, giving a smirk and a kiss of his own in reply. The companion took hold of Beer Belly's shoulder and was about to place the bottle of wine on the ground when Beer Belly held a hand up as if to say, "Not here." The man gave a nod, and the two walked side by side in the direction of Tottenham Court Road.

This attempt to curb additional overt displays of affection would bear no fruit, for Strike had snapped up the few incriminating photographs he needed. While his excitement for this particular case was all but extinguished, he couldn't help feeling giddy after being treated to such a revelation. Husbands stepping out on their wives with men had not exactly been rare in his experience, but a husband who did so on top of a history of heterosexual trysts deserved its own page in his book.

There was a time when Strike would have felt remorse, even anger, after securing documentation that would ultimately lead to a marriage's dissolution. Now that he had faced and accepted the everyday character of marital dissatisfaction, he felt relieved that the deluded wife's hunch had held water and that this case would cease demanding his and Robin's time. He knew, however, that this relief would eventually be superseded by a dose of dread for the one job that loomed large. Wednesday and Wardle couldn't come soon enough.


End file.
